Pages

Monday, February 27, 2012

February 2012 Reports

For those just arrived, I do a computation of the ANNUAL performance every Sunday, by subtracting this evening's meter reading from the same one, exactly a year ago. I add the weekly report to this blog diary entry, every week.

26 Feb 2012: Surely there are more important matters than my meters?! Well yes, we have to keep a perspective. Forest won their second match in a row, 2-1 against Birmingham who haven't lost at home all season! The biggest news story of the week is from Syria, where Marie Colvinand a french photographer were killed in Homs by shells from the Syrian Army, and in an astonishing development, the Syrian Government had a constitutional Referendum in the very same week. Organising one in peacetime is difficult enough, but how does one do it with civil war erupting? On the energy front, the brainless herd of 101 Tory MPs were initially ignored by the Prime Minister, but the large companies due to invest billions in wind farms and to create thousands of jobs have developed a very serious unease about the government's commitment. Rupert Murdoch, who still has Sun journalists awaiting court hearings for phone hacking, revealed the power of money over ethics, by launching a new paper, the Sun on Sunday. Proving that the closure of the News of the World in 2011 was in reality a commercial decision that would enable him to dismiss all those journalists without resistance from the unions, but get a new paper on the cheap by making the daily journalists work on a 7th day. Nelson Mandela had a health scare (operation), the Greek Parliament got their EU bailout, and Adele triumphed at the Grammies and Baftas.

Ground temperature seems to be rising from the wintry depths

Summer seems to have arrived early, with astonishing amounts of sunshine, giving me an all-time record for PV.

4,663 kWh for the House and 2,674 kWh GSHP, improving nicely, recovering from the cold spell of early February.

All time record for PV at 3,434 kWh. February 2011 was a drearily foggy and drizzly month, which must explain this surge. March'11 was sunny, so I expect to see this figure reducing soon.

Sunbox was 3,084 kWh, and sunbox clock of 2,506 hours. Very high figures.

Ground temperature is 11.3ºC. That is a threshold, crossed. I hope we don't see 10ºC until next December.

19 Feb 2012: Well, it seems that the Winter is over, the snow melted quite rapidly, and sunny days returned. Nottingham Forest won their first home match since November 2011 with a 2-0 against Coventry, but will have to do more than this to survive the season. The crises in Greece, Syria and Iran continue to make headlines almost every day. A horrible fire (started by a vexed prisoner) burnt almost 400 prisoners alive in a prison in Honduras.

Sovacool's pie chart of lifecycle costing of Nuclear.
Renewables cost between 9-33 g/kWh depending on
the source, location and technology.

Britain and France announce a major programme of nuclear power reactors, mostly engineered by the French, but involving Rolls Royce - frankly, I prefer to hear of them building superbly economical aero-engines than doing this. Unfortunately there is a lot of tweaking of figures to make nuclear look more economical - but doesn't include the hidden future costs. Fukushima may have survived due to some every brave japanese engineers, but there is still a 40 km diameter exclusion zone round it, populated by nothing by feral cats and dogs - imagine that in England! Research by Benjamin Sovacoolshows that the totalised cost of Nuclear is twice that of Renewables. See Guardian comment. The hideous billionaire goblin Rupert Murdoch jetted over to England, but at the same time as admitting that there was 'more of the swamp to drain' of his journalists being arrested for corruption, he announced a new Sun on Sunday to start up soon. What brazen hypocrisy! In Sweden, a man survived for 2 months without food in subzero temperatures (good news) and a coach of british schoolchildren returning from a ski trip crashed in France (very bad news). Hearing the deceased teacher described as 'a legend' reminded me of our loss in January 2010. Returning to the Peveril Solar house, the figures are looking better thanks to the thaw.

4,696 kWh House and 2,685 kWh GSHP, reducing after last week due to the thaw. I will include a chart in this summary at the end of the month.

All time record for PV at 3,413 kWh . It was another sunny but cold week, but this is a bit amazing, since the PV roof has no tuneable parts - its a sign of the weather change. Our lowest was 3,236 back in March 2011. January this year was better than last, and February this year has already overtaken last year's even though it is only the 19th Feb.

Sunbox was 3,055 kWh, and sunbox clock of 2,485 hours. High figures.

Ground temperature is 10.7ºC. Hopefully it will continue rising, towards the summer.

Valete, Whitney

12 Feb 2012: The Winter continues, although nothing like as severe in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Our snow has almost totally melted. The world has been quite newsworthy, with a death at each end of the week. Nigel Doughty (of Doughty Hanson) died last weekend at the age of only 54. He bought Nottingham Forest at a time when it was almost in administration, and has ploughed about 80 million into keeping the club going and bringing in new players. He was also a most generous benefactor to many charities and the Labour party. At this end of the week, we were all shocked to hear of Whitney Houston dying in LA at the age of only 48. In the Middle East, Syria is on the agenda even more with escalation to civil war, and the UN becoming ever more agitated about what to do, and in Iran, Ahmedinejad promises a 'major announcement' in the next few days. Oh dear.... It was Charles Dickens birthday on the 7th Feb. The UK's carbon emissions have risen above target by 3.1% - just as we are trying our best with Green Deals and Renewable Heat incentives, the figures show that things are worsening. Fabio Capello resigned as England football manager, and the press howl for Harry Redknapp to take over. Santorum (google that!) won three states in the Reptilian primary, and Willard Mittens R'Money won Maine. Gingrich is fading fast.

Nigel Doughty (photo ex-Forest website)

What happened with the Peveril Solar House? Well, with this weather, it's the end of high records for a while, the figures are reversing - although I can see an end to the cold weather now. Temperatures are expected to rise to normal levels by the end of the week.

4,716 kWh House and 2,722 kWh GSHP, not surprisingly, higher than last week due to the cold temperatures, but still uncannily tied to each other by the 2,000 difference.

All time record for PV at 3,408 kWh (yes, it was another sunny but cold week).

5 Feb 2012: The biggest news here is that the Winter has arrived about 3 months late and we actually have snow all around - it all seems to be blamed on Siberia, and I am glad we don't live there. Facebook yesterday was dominated by pictures of snow! In other parts of the world, Syria has dominated the news, but in the UK, the headlines seem to have been about Banker's pay and bonuses, Fred Goodwin's change of name to Shred Badlose (actually, truth is that his knighthood was cancelled by the Queen), and (relevant to what I am doing here) the loss of Chris Huhne as Environment secretary - he was effective at keeping climate change on the agenda, despite the retrograde influence of the Chancellor. Predictably and immediately, 100 conservative MPs are campaigning to make it more difficult to get wind farms built. Hopefully, the new guy, Ed Davey, will stand firm and keep green technology advancing. The odious and rich Mitt Romney won both Florida and Nevada primary for the Reptilians, against a field of bigoted but well funded cretins, so that wasn't much of an achievement. Santorum may be the last in the voting, but his name is one of the most popular words to Google. So.... back to Nottingham, the annual figures for this house were:

4,612 kWh House and 2,614 kWh GSHP, not surprisingly, slightly higher than last week due to the cold temperatures, but still uncannily tied to each other by the 2,000 difference.

All time record for PV at 3,405 kWh (yes, it was a sunny but cold week).

Sunbox was nearly at its highest ever, with 3,077 kWh, and sunbox clock highest ever of 2,489 hours.

Ground temperature is 10.2ºC, not rising yet, but thankfully not fallen below 10.0º despite the cold weather. A year ago, Feb was unusually mild (although a bit rainy) and the temperature was rising early, and PV harvest was poor.)

15 June 2014: It has been a dry June so far with negligible rain. I'm glad to have 300litres of water storage for the garden. House ...

There was an error in this gadget

Peveril Solar House

Welcome to Charging the Earth!

PEVERIL SOLAR is the first house in the UK to be entirely solar heated all year round! It is Carbon Net-Zero. It is an 'Active House' balancing inputs and outputs. PV generation and heating system consumption are in favourable balance using concepts of energy storage. Others claiming houses to be the first date from 2013 (and are unbuilt); this house exists and was carbon zero since 2011.

The name 'Charging' refers to 'storing energy underground': we have custom-built solar collectors, Surya Sunboxes, with ETFE front surfaces, to pump solar heat deep down into the earth. The building's heat pump gets all of this back in Realtime (immediately), Diurnially (later during the evenings) or Interseasonally (in Winter, months after the Summer).

Thus, we are augmenting the heatpump by storing long term heat in the summer, and we are defrosting the ground in winter-spring conditions, supplying solar energy directly to the heat pump, through its ground loop.

The five-way pentangle of Grid, Borehole, Heat pump, PV roof and Sunboxes have made the house Carbon Zero (for metered consumption). It's working, and we will continue to record data, to maintain that efficiency, and write it up in this website through to next year and beyond.

During theAutumn of 2012, we built a small house extension that is ultra insulated, with a higher energy gain than it loses.

Note, that we still have a net import of power from the Grid, because we still need power for lighting, cooking and appliances. But for the building emissions (as opposed to lifestyle emissions), we have achieved a credit balance of the regulated quantities, as recorded by meters.

The web-log follows the project from this general idea in Aug. 2009 to a technology of Surya Sunboxes, which seem to be effective - reducing energy costs of the house. Some of the Tabs will help you to get background and theory. You can click below to 'Follow Blog' to get email notifications - or email me. Please add Comments to the blog entries. If you find items in the Glossary that need explaining better, please ask. Thankyou!

Publications

Equipment sponsor

Kingspan, for Varisol Tubes

Equipment Sponsor

MG Renewables

Equipment sponsor

Ice Energy Heat Pumps

Equipment Sponsor

Holscot, for ETFE panels, re-fronting the Sunbox

About the Author...

David Nicholson-Cole is a Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Nottingham, with 35 years experience of architectural teaching and practice, which has included special interests in construction, building information modelling, tall building design and renewable energy technologies.

Finally, thanks to my deceased aunt, Margaret Cringle (1915-2008) whose legacy paid for most of the cost of this project - as one who was always turning lights out to save electricity, she would be very pleased!